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Some Sort 3518
This is Deck #2 in my "Musings on Dáin" series. See the first deck for more details about the project.
Our first deck was just a basic, bog-standard Dain deck. For our second deck, we take that basic framework and we strip it all the way down to the bone. That's right, it's time to get reductionist.
Dain is a global dwarf boost and also a credible defender provided you have enough readying to turn his attack boost back on afterwards. Here, we aim to show that those two aspects alone are incredibly powerful even without any other tech. We've taken away any other dwarf heroes so we can use The Grey Wanderer, which lets Dain play dwarves from every sphere and also gives him repeatable readying and healing to take advantage of his ability as a defender.
(Grey Wanderer doesn't let us use the unique dwarves from out of sphere, but as I mentioned in the first part, those guys are all in a partner deck anyway.)
Because this deck is reductionist, I haven't included any card draw or resource acceleration (beyond Grey Wanderer, which is just sufficient to play our dwarves). Also, with the exception of Hardy Leadership and three cards that start in play or in your opening hand (Strider, The One Ring, and Inner Strength), every single card is a dwarf ally.
Playing this deck basically devolves into top-decking a dwarf, playing that dwarf, and maybe defending with Dain if you need to. The only tricky bit of timing comes in the first round: trigger Grey Wanderer during planning and play a 1- or 2-cost dwarf ally. That will leave you with at least one resource left over so the next round you can play another 2-cost ally without triggering Grey Wanderer. This lets you save your Grey Wanderer trigger until the combat phase so you can use it to ready Dain after defending (and get your two extra resources then).
And that's pretty much the deck. Top-deck a dwarf, play it, defend, trigger Grey Wanderer to ready Dain, repeat next round. No meaningful decisions, no tricks or shenanigans, just draw, play, defend, repeat. It's Dain stripped down to the bone.
What better way to illustrate how powerful Dain is than to show that even this bare minimum is still totally playable and, if paired with another dwarf deck... dare I say it... even rather good.
| 3 comments |
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Dec 17, 2020 |
Dec 17, 2020The point isn’t to make the best deck possible. (Timely Aid would certainly be an upgrade.) The point is to demonstrate that if you strip Dain down to the bare minimum he’s still totally playable. No extra card draw, no resource acceleration, no filtering, very minimal player choice. Just draw dwarf, play dwarf, defend, repeat. It’s a car without an engine and yet it still drives fine. A legit Grey Wanderer Dain deck would look quite different. |
Dec 18, 2020Very cool concept and plan. Definitely hope to see that legit Grey Wanderer deck later in this series! |
How about some Timely Aid?